Chosen Nursery rhyme :

• London Bridge Is Falling Down
• Rocka-bye-baby

Outline of Dadaism

Dadaism was an artistic and literary movement that began in 1916. I feel that this art movement has many of elements of the succeeding Pop Art movement which I really love but has more symbolism behind it and actually provides social commentary through the dadaist works. Aesthetically, dada artworks had no restrictions and it was up to the artist to determine what medium and technique to use to ultimately produce a work that was unconventional but having a social message.

Outline of Constructivism

Constructivism was a movement which rejected the idea of artworks having independent meanings according to the artist. To me it seemed more of a philosophy as it encouraged artworks to be produced for social purposes.

Both movements seem to go hand in hand having emerged at around the same time period, they were heavily influenced by the socio-poilitical happenings of that time. They reject the the conventional ideas of Art as Dadaism rejects the conventional aesthetic value of art while Constructivism rejects the As the movement emerged around the time where World War I and the Russian Revolution occurred, its artistic roots stemmed from a view that rejected autonomous art and held the belief that art should be used for voicing social messages. To me, both art movement reminds me of the chinese propoganda posters, but also in a sense are polar opposites. The messages embedded in the art of these two movements are much more subtle and it’s aesthetic value is what catches the viewers’ eye first and that is what attracted me to the artworks of the two artists I have researched on.

These two movements also appropriate their subjects through various means such as magazines, photography, scenography and typography which really shows how the many mediums and techniques could come together to form the final output and that the messages that the artists’ themselves would like to convey could be hidden in those mediums and techniques itself, strengthening the intended message.

I was quite afraid at first when it was announced that we had to research on dadaism as I have never liked the movement because it’s so segmented and ‘messy’ to me. But I have realised that it’s a very fun movement which allows you to take bits and pieces of images and appropriate them to your own context which is the point of this assignment. After looking up works of different artists I felt that Hannah Hoch’s and Rene Magritte’s works really spoke to me as the truemeaning of their works don’t lie in the aesthetic quality but the hidden meanings behind them. I also liked how both artists play with scale and create a sort of surrealistic environment with their subject matters.

Hannah Hoch also had a certain style of photo montage. This style, blended with the altering of scale and proportions and by carefully cropping out their intended subjects, creates a sort of whimsicality and a parallel world where surrealistic qualities are the reality.

Some of Hannah Hoch’s works

Hoch plays a lot with scale and proportion and distorts the conventional forms to create new images and meanings.

Although Rene Magritte wasn’t necessarily a Dada artist but more of a surrealist artist, I feel like he successfully used various images such as using birds and apples to convey different meanings. By placing an object infant of a painting of himself or another, he manages to ‘hide’ what is behind and that in itself provokes thought of whether what we think is behind the subject truly is what is behind the subject. Also in his work ‘This is not a pipe’, the work takes away the identity of the object, the pipe, which we imposed on it and make the viewers question the real identity of it. I feel like Magritte’s work would help in this project for me as I try to use different subjects to form a new one, thus taking away the original identity of the object.

I would like to explore the areas of scale and proportion in my work to enhance certain messages or effects I would like to bring across and using careful placement of objects I want to be able to form the composition in a systematic yet seemingly messy manner to reflect how the dada artists seem to haphazardly place their subject matters but have messages in them. I would also like to expand by including symbolism in my composition.

I feel that Dadaism is able to find that balance between abstraction and surrealism as it still has recognisable subject matters but placed in a very abstract manner. That to me is interesting and useful in this project.

Rene Magritte, Golconde, 1953

I have decided to use London Bridge and Rock-a-bye-baby as I wanted to play with the concept of things falling and breaking apart. I also had an idea of having some surrealistic elements such as incorporating Piet Mondrian’s repetitive effects in his surrealist works to enhance the image of falling and being frozen in time such as that in Golconda. I like the repetitive nature of that work and how,by placing his subjects infant of and behind various elements such as the building and how he creates visual space by playing with scale. Thus, I feel like proportion and scale plays an important role in this project and I would like to explore these themes and how to use certain objects to convey messages.